As America's court system sentences offenders to longer prison terms, America's prison system must deal with overcrowded prisons. Likewise, there is a growing problem of non-violent offenders who are increasingly at risk sharing prisons with violent offenders. Non-prison detentions are being explored as an alternative to incarceration of these non-violent offenders, thus adressing both problems. One such alternative is house arrest.
One measure of the success of house arrest is by the success of the surveillance equipment. In general, house arrest equipment provides a monitor which is secured to the offender. Such monitors may include a radio transmitter which generates radio signals at a predetermined frequency. These signals are then picked up by a local receiver, which is generally connected to a wire-based telephone at the offender's home. The range of these systems is limited to a few hunted yards. Other monitors require that the offender call in to a predetermined location periodically to play a signal across the telephone line. By comparing the caller B of the calling telephone and the signal from the device, the officer in charge of the offender may then determine the offender's location.
The weak links in these systems is that each telephone-based system is limited to a single subject, and both systems are limited in coverage area and/or require a person to monitor the offenders and watch for violations. In addition, the telephone system may be fooled by privacy systems that block the sending of the calling line identification. As a result, many of these systems have failed to stop offenders from violating their assigned areas or times for reporting in, because the monitoring officer was not available, too overworked, or not vigilant.
Therefore, a problem in the art is that house arrest monitors cannot automatically monitor a number of prisoners and automatically contact law enforcement officials when a boundary has been violated by a subject.